


Adagio in B-Flat

by freneticfloetry



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: An Abundance of Musical Metaphor, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/pseuds/freneticfloetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A solo violin in an unfinished symphony, with no clue what note to play next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adagio in B-Flat

**Author's Note:**

> Characters are in the public domain, but were created by Arthur Conan Doyle. _Sherlock_ canon courtesy of Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss. Epic thanks to the best Britpicker in the world, starseverywhere.

It hadn't always been like this.

It'd been like fire, before, a blaze beneath his skin — boiling his blood, scorching his bones black. Painful. Hateful. Unbearable, until three years living as a dead man — in suspicion, in shadow, snapping the strands of a spider's web — had almost made him miss it.

(Standing over the body of Sebastian Moran, his final problem, he'd toasted Moriarty with a mouthful of blood. _Well done, Jim. You've burned the boredom out of me._ )

Now, it's merely an itch. Relieved by rebirth, scratched with the sound of his violin and the smell of Baker Street and the sight of John strolling in with a Thai takeaway. 

"Come and eat," he grunts, hefting the bag onto the table.

Sherlock flips the bow in his fingers. "Not hungry."

"Imagine that." John pops open one tinfoil container. "You're eating anyway."

Force-feeding efforts have increased tenfold since Sherlock's return, as if finding every pound he's lost will magically make things just as they were. Futile — there's no easy way to explain how _heavy_ he's become — but a balm of its own, nonetheless.

"Later."

John's sigh is loud and long-suffering, though the impact is somewhat lessened by the spring roll. "It'll be cold later. And you've got somebody's spleen marinating in the microwave, so you'll eat now, thank you very much." At the answering silence, John blows out a breath. "Look, I got your basil noodles and your curry fried rice and your spicy pad whatever with the peanuts. There is a metric tonne of food here, and you are bloody well going to eat _something_ , if I have to shove it down your throat."

Anyone else would've pulled out all the stops by now, played on guilt and grief and _damn it, Sherlock, you owe me this_ , but John Watson is decidedly unlike anyone else.

Sherlock squints, sniffing. "Did you get cashew chicken?"

John hangs his head and holds up a container, and Sherlock hums.

"Pity. I wanted the shrimp."

Before John can decide which chopstick to stab him with — a hollow threat, to be sure, but the thought clearly crosses his mind — the bell buzzes. " _Christ,_ " John mumbles, heading for the stairs. "Whatever it is, Sherlock, you are not taking this case until you've eaten. I mean it!"

Moot. Single ring, but the timing is wrong: long, lingering, consistent pressure throughout. Not a client. There's history here, someone with a score — one of John's girlfriends. Gang of Mycroft's thwarted goons. Even Anderson, after last week's locked room fiasco. Ill-advised, yes, but just his brand of idiotic.

He tucks the violin under his chin and launches into a furious caprice, with enough weight to drown out the voices downstairs. Too much — he doesn't catch the cadence of steps bracketing John's until they're halfway up, steps he knows just as well.

The scale screeches to a halt in time with the men at the door, too late for anything else. Careless. Stupid, _stupid._

He breathes in to brace for that voice, the heldentenor he hasn't heard for half a lifetime. 

"You always did have problems with that parallel fifth," Victor says. History, indeed. "Hello, Sherlock."

\---

Bored.

His assignments for the week are already done, his dressing is already starting to itch, and his asinine brother has already called to insinuate how incapable he is of taking care of himself — clearly, he'd _asked_ to be viciously attacked by an animal. And just to add insult to injury, he'd lost his violin in the process.

Bored.

He's charted the ratio of students to faculty who pass outside his window (further separating students on his floor, then sorting all subjects by gender, hair color, and hand dominance). He's repeated his tedious biology practical twice (and noted his professor's painfully incorrect phylum sub classification in the margins). Perhaps he can make a study of the speed at which his sutures dissolve before his brain rots away entirely.

_Bored._

A sudden knock gets his mind going again, if only for a second. The span of two raps, in fact — apprehensive, unsure. Interesting. Anyone with any shred of conviction would've gone at least three (with the exception of Mycroft, who never knocks at all).

There are crutches in the corner, only good for getting tangled in his dressing gown. By the time he's hobbled to the door, his mystery guest has knocked twice more. Tentative, but resigned. Yes, this could be very interesting.

He swings the door open, only to be greeted by the boy from the gardens with the lethal little terrier. 

"Oh." Sherlock slumps. Fair-haired, brown eyed, slight scruff, with deliberately-distressed jeans and a strategically-frayed jumper. The very picture of the starving artist. But the denim is designer and the wool is angora — ah, the bespoke bohemian. Artist, perhaps, but one who dines very well. "Nevermind."

The boy's brows come together in confusion. "Sorry?" he says, and watches Sherlock wave a hand in dismissal. A shaky smile, sheepish. "I suppose you remember me."

Sherlock pins him with a look. He has the decency to flush.

"Fair enough. Even if Brahms hadn't made quite the lasting impression, I'm sure the tetanus shot would've done the trick." The boy swallows, opens his mouth again, and stops. "Should you be standing?"

"I should be in class, learning just how unqualified the professors are _this_ week." Sherlock quirks an eyebrow. "I assume there's a reason that you're here. Perhaps a cat teeming with toxoplasmosis." 

The sound of laughter — staccato, surprising — sets Sherlock's teeth on edge, and teeth were a touchy subject to start with. "They wouldn't let me in without being family, and you weren't exactly forthcoming. I may have snuck a look at your chart before they took you back."

"Yes, how charmingly invasive," Sherlock says. "Why are you _here_?" 

"I wanted to apologize. Again. And see this safely home." 

A hand comes up, holding (how had he missed it, _how_?) Sherlock's wayward Stradivarius.

He bounces a bit on the balls of his feet, then leans forward: conspiratorial, strangely intimate. "Did you want to keep dressing me down here in the hallway, or do you think I could come in?"

Sherlock drums his fingers on the edge of the door. This whole show is probably just a play to prevent the courts from destroying the dog, but it's this boy or mind-numbing boredom.

He hops backward on his good foot, granting just enough space to slip through, then shoves the door shut and heads back to his chair. The boy sets the case down on Sherlock's desk and carefully pulls out the instrument inside, presents it at eye-level.

"No worse for wear, thankfully, though I think you might've abused it more than I did."

Sherlock runs his eyes over the violin — bridge reseated and pegs freshly treated, body polished to the point of gleaming. The maintenance work is just this side of a skilled luthier, and the hands beneath the bottom are familiarly callused at each fingertip.

Interesting, after all.

"Fine," he says, straightening his sleeve. "That'll do."

His company is undeterred. "You know, this was my first time with a Strad. I've always been a Guarnerni fan, myself. But it's a beautiful piece, it really is." His eyes jerk to Sherlock's. "Not that I played it. I just wanted to clean it up a bit, bring it back in one piece. I didn’t play it, I swear."

"No?" Sherlock stretches his bad leg out in front of him, crosses his arms. "Well go on, then."

"What?" the boy says, snorting and smiling all at once. "Now?"

Sherlock shrugs. "No time like the present."

There's a moment of hesitation (two knocks, just two), and then sure hands tug the bow free, tuck the Strad into position.

Oh. _Oh._ Bach's _Chaconne_ in D minor, full of turns and transposition and thematic transformations, a trick in triple time. Difficult to interpret, near impossible to perfect. It's in the numbers (three sections, four-measure progression, half-notes and quarter notes and sixteenths and thirty-seconds) — a rubric, a pattern, a _problem_ to be solved, in fragmentations and inversions and infinite melodic rhythm. 

A musician with a mind for mathematics. More than interesting. Brilliant.

He doesn't realize he's closed his eyes until he opens them again.

"Thank you," the boy is saying, and it seems yanked from his own head. "I'm afraid my loyalties still lie with my del Gesu, but that was truly a pleasure."

For the first time he can remember, Sherlock has no idea what to say. Boredom, it would seem, has fled.

The boy looks at him and shakes his head. "Sorry, I've just realized… I might've maimed you for life, and you don't even know my name." He palms the bow next to the bridge and sticks out his free hand. "I'm Victor. Victor Trevor."

\---

He is much as Sherlock remembers — tall, tan, too blond for irises so brown. Incapable of standing still. Laugh lines etched at the eyes, around the mouth — he'd smiled incessantly, even then — all the familiar folds a decade deeper. 

(Ten years, two months, twenty-eight days since the last time, a triumphant debut at the Salle Pleyel. One of them had played Rimsky-Korsakov to perfection, _Scheherazade_ on an early-era Scarampella. The other had snorted six lines of cocaine in the gold-gilded bathroom, one to smother each solo in haze. _Tell us a story, Sherlock._ )

The differences in past and present are painfully obvious. Hair trimmed shorter than he preferred, waves tamed by product, skin slightly sallow beneath all the sun. Shifts on his feet — partially habit, probable uncertainty, possible fatigue. Signet ring on the second finger of his right hand, freshly-polished, half a size too large. Shallow lines sketched at the edges now, creased into the corners, against the grain — tight, tense. Foreign on his face. 

Of course. It takes entirely different muscles to frown.

John clears his throat — pointed, uncomfortable. Reminder of his presence. Victor pulls his eyes away.

"You must be Dr Watson," he says, giving John his full attention. "Victor Trevor. I'm… an old friend of Sherlock's."

"Friend." John blinks, looks to Sherlock to refute, blinks again when he doesn't. "And apparently we're going with that. Tea?"

"Unnecessary." Sherlock balks at the picture they paint, standing there together — warm hair and woven jumpers and wide-open faces, too many old wounds between them. "Victor won't be staying."

To his credit, he hardly looks surprised. "Thank you," he says, stepping closer to Sherlock, "no."

"Right," John says. "Well, then. I'll just… leave you to it." He heads for the kitchen and his abandoned takeaway, and Sherlock counts until he comes back.

"Nine-point-eight seconds," he says, setting his bow aside. "Nearly impressive. I daresay your willpower is improving." 

"Marvelous, good to hear. Be sure to note that in my spreadsheet." His brows pull together. "You two know each other _how_ , exactly?"

"University," Sherlock mutters. Insufficient — it's not enough to appease John on his best day, but this… more than curiosity, more than mimicking Sherlock's mood. He's _threatened_ , somehow: tight at the mouth and through the set of his shoulders, spine snapped to military attention. 

No matter. Victor's never been one for brevity.

"I found him in the gardens behind the chapel our first week back from break, working out the allegro coda to Mendelssohn's Concerto in E minor." His smile is small, though fond, and Sherlock shifts in his seat. "Didn't know whether to openly salivate or slap him one for having his Strad out in the rain."

Sherlock scowls. "It was the andante," he says, "and the rain had stopped."

"Fancied himself Felix a bit, back then." He's grinning now — annoying, if not entirely ineffectual. As such, all the more aggravating. "You did, didn't you? No other excuse for that hair."

Sherlock eyes roll, Victor's crinkle with laughter, and John's look back and forth between them, unnerved but unreadable. Unprecedented.

"That's... certainly a picture. Almost afraid to hear which way you went."

The chuckles stutter and fade, a ricochet arpeggio through two octaves. "Neither, actually. I had to pry my dog off his ankle and take him to A&E." He shakes his head, reaches up to scratch at the back of his neck — still sorry, after all this time. How pointless. "Six stitches, ten days off his feet, and countless hours of my company in contrition. But the scar gave him character, I think, and Brahms grew to love him in the end. Clearly a case of animals for the ethical treatment of antique instruments."

His voice warms with the last of it: thoughtful, deliberate. He needn't have bothered. (Sherlock knows it all too well — pitched in the key of passing deductions, an appreciative echo of his own baritone. _Oh, clearly._ )

"Indeed, a most memorable introduction," Sherlock says. His own voice is too tight for even John to miss, and he stands, fastening the buttons on his jacket. "As much as I've enjoyed this stroll down memory lane, I have a case."

Patently untrue, but proven effective. John's "do we, now?" will come as soon as the front door closes, but — barring Mycroft's meddlesome omniscience — he's the only one who's ever known better.

Then Victor snorts, sharper than any col legno he'd ever actually strike. "Must be positively enthralling," he says. "You only ever play Paganini when you're bored." 

"Which would explain why I'm suddenly itching for Duo Merveille," Sherlock snaps. " _Why are you here?_ "

Victor sobers, suddenly serious — Sherlock isn't the only one who remembers. "Perhaps I shouldn't have come," he says. "I suppose I just thought… that you should know." He turns at the rise of Sherlock's right eyebrow and extends a hand to John — arm steady, fingers spread. Friendly. Genuine. Never been anything but. "Pleasure to meet you, doctor."

"Yeah." John shakes, squeezes harder than is strictly necessary. Less so, evidently. "Likewise."

A card drops to Sherlock's desk — Belgian linen blend, die cut and embossed in wood grain, with the curve of an hourglass hollowed along one edge and a face foiled in swirling silver script and four long lines of strings. He reaches out to touch before he can stop himself.

"Victor."

The footsteps stop falling, Sherlock stares at his back. They've both been here before.

"I am sorry," he says, though it's unclear just what for (this scene? His loss? Their history?). "About your father."

Victor nods before he's gone: once, twice, again. 

(All of the above.)

\---

They fly through all four books, _Parosito_ to the Pizzicato. 

_I could bring mine 'round, if you like. Take on a duo or two._ Sherlock has learned to spot the signs — the lip twitches and head tilts, the quick grins with too many teeth, that will eventually find him alone in a basement or abandoned outbuilding or stretch of overrun marshland. But Victor's smile is slow and steady, such a ridiculously hopeful thing that, against his better judgment, Sherlock lets himself hope, too.

Now they're locked in a duel in Sherlock's stuffy room, a dark del Gesu and a bell-bright Strad, Bartók bouncing off the walls. Victor plays each one from memory — _bit of an enthusiast_ , he'd said, both declaration and confession. _You'd like him, I think, with that mad brain of yours. There's an entire movement with timing based on the Fibonacci sequence._ Sherlock had scoffed, then stayed up 'til six slotting the entire series away in his mind.

They finish the forty-fourth duo with a final flourish, and Victor flops to his back on Sherlock's unmade bed, bouncing a bit, bow (Paesold, pernambuco, gold-mounted with a Parisian frog) clutched to his chest. 

" _Jesus._ " Out of breath, inexplicably. "If I had your hand span I could take over the world."

Sherlock stares from his seat at the window, brought up short by the sight of this strange boy sprawled on his sheets. ( _Pillow Dance_ , book one, number fourteen: allegretto with varying accentuation and sudden changes in dynamics).

"Stop fishing," he finally says. "Your hand span is fine." He sees to his own bow, loosening the hairs before they break. "The tutor who told you otherwise only did so due to your superior phrasing at the tender age of… twelve?" A squint, searching — it's an old slight. " _Ten_. Even better. Good for business, hell on his ego. And yours, apparently."

"You say that now. In time, I think you'll find my ego suitably obnoxious." Victor rolls to his side and goes up on one elbow, looking anxious, inquisitive. Inevitable. Six days since the first time. A new record. 

"How do you do that?"

Sherlock sighs. "Do what?"

" _That_ ," Victor says. "Pick out bits and pieces of other peoples' lives."

"Observation," Sherlock mutters. "Logic. Healthy aversion to human stupidity. Simple, really."

Victor raises an eyebrow. "So you _simply observed_ that the A &E attending wasn't fit to stitch up your ankle because his boyfriend had just left him."

"What exactly don't you follow?" Sherlock lays his bow across his lap. Might as well get it over with. "Paced, chewed his lower lip, checked his pager twice in the amount of time it took to get me on the gurney. Driven to distraction, clearly. Day-old shirt and pressure wrinkles down the back of his trousers said he'd slept in his clothes the night before, fresh coffee stain on his coat said he didn't do very much of it. The degree of conjunctival injection in his eyes suggested heavy drinking — no alcohol on his breath, but vodka is nearly odorless. The skin irritation and lacrimal inflammation, on the other hand, suggested heavy secretion, brought on by what must have been a truly obscene display of tears. Grief. Could've been a more permanent loss, but the breathing wasn't right — entirely too erratic for death. Deeply distressed, yes, but too rapid for a patient and too shallow for family. A lover, then." He spreads his hands. "Breakup. Simple."

Past experience has provided only two likely outcomes — people either hurl insults in his general direction or run screaming in the other — but Victor simply smiles.

"If you say so." He shakes his head. "But why a _boyfriend_ , specifically?"

"Carrying three extra stone and in desperate need of a haircut? Obviously a long-term relationship. But no wedding ring. That level of investment, with a woman, he'd've married her by then."

Victor looks at him, long enough to seem significant. ( _Enumerating Song_ , book three, number thirty-four: switching fortes and swirling accidentals, counting counting counting.)

" _Simple_ ," he says. "Like the way you played every piece by heart just now, when you barely knew the man's name this time yesterday." 

Sherlock shrugs. Victor stares for another moment, then drops back to the bed.

"Simple my arse. There's nothing simple about you." A sudden puff of laughter, oddly appreciative, and his head turns toward Sherlock, eyes as bright as his grin. "Christ, I bet you're brilliant at Cluedo. Tomorrow, then?"

\---

He takes a seat at the table and grabs for the first thing within reach, and John slips into the one across, an easy read once again. Curious. Concerned.

"All right?"

Sherlock snorts, dripping with disdain. It might be more than the meal. " _Please._ "

"My mistake," John says. "What was all that, then?"

"Not now." Sherlock waves the food in his fingers and makes himself chew. "I'm _eating._ "

"You're _stalling_ , is what you're doing. But keep at it, I'll take any excuse I can get." He dumps a clump of noodles on his plate and shoves it toward Sherlock, then scoops a forkful from the container. "And don't think you're getting over with that spring roll, I'd eaten half of it already."

"Mmm." Sherlock flicks a crumb from his cuff. "I hadn't noticed."

" _Eat_ ," John stresses, pointing at the plate with his fork, "or I'll have Lestrade take back your cold cases." Sherlock sneers, but takes another bite, and John seems appeased for the course of his curry. Then he drops his brows and inhales through his mouth — predictable. Textbook. 

"What ever happened to—" His voice drops and his features contort, shoulders bunching up by his ears. "—'I don't have _friends_ '?"

"Don't attempt impressions, John, it makes your face all unfortunate." Swallowing takes some effort — the spring roll tastes like sawdust. "I believe I amended that statement. To include present company, if you'll recall."

"I recall it fine. Doesn't explain the company that's just left." John watches him closely for a moment, then presses his lips together. "So the father…"

"Dead," Sherlock says. "Obviously."

"Right," John scoffs. "And you deduced that from, what, the way he turned down tea?"

Sherlock shrugs. "Might've seen it in the papers."

"You took one look at this morning's paper and pitched it out the window."

"Yes, but I _might have._ " 

John shakes his head and shifts in his seat — rigid, restless, with a shadow in his face and a stiffness in his voice that makes Sherlock sit up straight.

"You thought he was a part of it," he says. "The shortness, the stance, this incessant line of questioning… It bothers you. That I haven't told you everything."

"No," John says, then tosses down his fork. " _Yes._ " He scrubs a hand through his hair. "Christ, Sherlock, _shouldn't it_? Three years you were gone, three months you've been back, and I haven't got a clue what happened to you. I know you're scarred. Seriously underweight. Scream bloody murder in your sleep, when you can be arsed to sleep at all. What I don't know is _why_. And I've gotta say, leaving my mind to fill in the blanks is about to drive me 'round the bloody twist. So tell me, what part of that shouldn't I be _bothered_ about?"

It's the closest he's come to cracking since his fist connected with a dead man's jaw, and Sherlock is still incapable of explanation. Wouldn't know where to begin putting it all into words — the hunting, the hiding, the hollow in his chest.

The screams are news to even him.

"But no, Sherlock. I asked because I recognized him, is all." John throws up a hand, so agitated he's practically buzzing with it. "Cheers, it's the one day a year you get to be wrong."

" _Recognized?_ " Sherlock squints, contemplating the chances. World-renowned musician, face plastered on posters, son of a prominent financier. "Not entirely implausible, he's quite well-known in some circles. Even you might have seen something somewhere."

"Yes," John says, "somewhere remarkably like your funeral."

Sherlock stills, stunned. The thought had never occurred to him — unacceptable enough that John had mourned, that day and every one after — but nothing otherwise would ever occur to Victor. He'd have come to pay his respects, even if Sherlock wasn't owed any. 

Of course. _Sentiment_.

The vibration of his phone is like a shiver on his skin. Impeccable timing, as always. He'd expect nothing less.

 _Careful, dear brother_ , the text reads. _We wouldn't want you sliding back into old habits._


End file.
